REVIEW – I’m a little (ok, a lot) obsessed with seeing what’s going on at my house/property when I’m home and when I’m away. Some areas of my property aren’t within WiFi coverage, so when the offer to review the Elysoo 4G LTE security camera came in, I was happy to accept it. Let’s set it up, install it, and see how it performs.
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $199.99 (on page coupons)
Where to buy: Amazon
What is it?
The Elysoo 4G LTE security camera is an outdoor PTZ security camera that uses 4G LTE instead of WiFi for connectivity.
What’s included?
- Camera
- SIM card pre-installed (not clear which carrier the included SIM uses)
- Solar panel
- Mounting hardware
- User manual
Tech specs
Resolution: 5 Megapixels
Connectivity: 4G LTE Cellular (No WiFi required)
Zoom: 10X Optical Zoom
Power: Solar Powered
Storage: Cloud or microSD card (not included)
Battery: 15000mAh rechargeable battery and 8W charging solar panel
Features:
Human Detection
Auto Focus
Usage: Outdoor Security Camera
Design and feature
The Elysoo 4G LTE security camera is an outdoor PTZ camera that is available in the black color that you see here, as well as white. If you’re not familiar with the term PTZ, it stands for Pan, Tilt, Zoom. The camera module can rotate from horizontally and vertically.
The housing and bracket are made of plastic. The bracket has slots and holes for screws and/or straps (straps aren’t included).
The bottom of the camera module has a rubber flap that protects two slots.
There’s a SIM card slot (which comes pre-installed), and a TF/microSD card slot. A memory card is not included with the purchase. I installed my own microSD card in the slot. There’s also a reset switch.
The bracket has a built-in USB-C port for charging the camera’s internal battery. Under the protective flap, there is also a physical on/off switch.
It’s also the connection for the included solar panel.
Set up and installation of the camera
Setting up the Elysoo 4G LTE security camera was pretty painless. I charged it completely and then temporarily installed the camera and solar panel on a post across the road from my house. I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to install it permanently, so I used some extra long Velcro straps to attach it to the post.
UBox App
I then installed the UBox app on my iPhone. The app requires that you create an account and password, and it then connects to the camera. The SIM card included with the camera provides an initial 300mb of data and once that’s been used, you’ll have to decide if you want to subscribe to their cloud service. More about that in a bit.
The user interface for the UBox app is pretty straightforward. When you tap the camera, you can use the PTZ controls to move the camera remotely. Unfortunately, moving the camera is a manual process through the app. If the camera detects motion, it will NOT move to follow the motion. The PTZ feature is only there to point the camera.
In addition to moving the camera, the app will also allow you to zoom in as much as 10x. The images above show the view at 1x, 5x, and 10x. The image quality is good enough that I can read my license plate when zoomed in 10x. The camera is mounted about 50 feet from the back of my car.
I have been decently impressed by the image quality of the Elysoo camera.
Video quality is decent at night, too.
Detecting motion, notifications, and remote viewing
The only motion detection settings available are the ones you see above, and you can see how I set up the camera for my testing.
While the image quality and zoom features of the Elysoo are good, my overall opinion of its motion detection feature hasn’t been overly favorable. Does it work? Yes. But is it consistent and reliable? Not so much. Some days, I don’t receive any notifications at all, even when I see cars drive by in front of the camera multiple times. Other days, I get several notifications. Note that even though I have the camera set to detect humans, I’ve never receive a notification that it has detected a human even when I am standing right in front of the camera.
Then there’s remote viewing. I set up the Elysoo before going on a week’s vacation to Florida. During the time I was away, we had a very severe storm, and I was trying to view the camera from Florida to check my house. I could not get the camera to load until I turned WiFi off on my phone and only then did the live view of the camera sometimes load. Most of the time, it would not load. When I’m home, it seems to load just fine, so I’m not sure why I had issues on vacation. It could be signal strength from the camera to LTE, but most times the status shows 2-3 bars.
Subscriptions
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A subscription is required for the 4G service and their cloud service, where video clips can be stored.
The camera comes with an initial 300MB of data on the included SIM card. After that runs out, you’ll need to sign up for a plan through the app or use your own LTE SIM card.
The camera will not operate if you don’t pay for the cellular data plan, but you don’t have to pay for the cloud service plan if you don’t want to. To get around that, you just need to insert your own microSD card in the camera.
Final thoughts
The Elysoo 4G LTE camera is easy to set up and has good image and zoom features. The fact that you can put it anywhere and not have to worry about WiFi connectivity was something I was excited about, but my issues with accessing the camera remotely and motion detection have left me disappointed.
What I like about Elysoo 4G LTE security camera
- Easy setup
- Good image quality
- 10x optical zoom
- Ability to save activity clips to a microSD card
What needs to be improved?
- Remote connectivity needs work
- Motion detection capture needs work
- Human detection does not work at all as far as I can tell
Price: $199.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Elysoo. Elysoo did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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